


Stolen Getaway Spacejunk

by K_Popsicle



Category: Captain - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Engineering, Escape, Getting Together, IN SPACE!, M/M, Muscles, Pining, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25359697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Steve and Tony are stuck in a getaway spaceship, that they've stolen. Tony just wishes he could breathe better, and that Steve hadn't lost his shirt in the fray.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 58
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	Stolen Getaway Spacejunk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonster/gifts).



There’s a flickering light on the Starship Hindenburg and it highlights the curves of Mr-Captain-America-Sir’s arm muscles like he’s in some sort of high budget celebrity photoshoot. There’s dirty smears and beads of sweat mottled across his triceps and Tony has a hard time looking anywhere but. The man lost his shirt in the fight and it is, frankly, unfair. Unfortunately the good ship Junkpile (Trade Mark pending) was about as reliable as a furby in a bathtub- after three bottles of whiskey.

“Which isn’t very reliable,” Tony concludes a foot behind Conan the Barbarian just as the lights fade out accompanied by the sharp electronic sound of the engine powering down, or as Tony liked to say it: dying.

“What was that?” Steve asks and uses his ridiculously big hand to push his escaping fringe back out of his eyes. Tony is not a praying man, but he sends a half-hearted prayer to whatever all seeing _thing_ is out there that continues to mess up his life before he takes a fortifying breath.

“This ship is a bigger tragedy than the Titanic,” he replies instead of repeating himself. Repeating yourself is _boring_ and Steve heard him, he just didn’t have the full context to understand. He pushes on before Steve can tell him about the Great and Tragic Tragedy of the Titanic and how many souls were lost that (presumably) cold winters (maybe) night. Tony twitches with the need to look up the details he doesn’t know, details he’s never cared about before, and reminds himself that he’s an electronic engineer and the date or location of the Titanic’s sinking is irrelevant to his interests. “What we need right now,” he veers, “is one of those glow-in-the-dark type of aliens. Glow-in-the-dark is-”

“I think I can make a guess, Tony. We don’t need it, I can still see.” Steve cuts him off, which is rude, and Tony would call him on it except Bob the Builder bends back down into the conduit tunnel and Tony is granted the awe-inspiring stretch of a perfect spine and miles of bare skin wrapped around solid muscles. He looks away when he feels the synapsis in his brain start to fire in the wrong direction, scrunches his face up and stares down the slate grey industrial hallway. It’s like no-one cared about aesthetics at all when designing these things. Down the corridor the emergency lights glow red and dull under a lifetime’s worth of dirt, but honestly it’s a surprise he can see anything. Whatever Luc Deveraux can see is probably enough to do the job. It’s an annoyance that his father never did the proper studies so Tony doesn’t have the paper work to memorise what his limitations are, and more annoying that Steve’s too weary of their medics to let anyone run the gamut of tests they’d need now to figure it out. For science, of course. Tony just wants to know their odds of survival in this rust-bucket at the edges of space. Seems like it’d be the kind of thing a normal healthy person would want to know.

“Do you know what you’re doing in there?” Tony asks not for the second time, because he’s been biting his tongue on the question since Vin Diesel ripped the hatch off the conduit tunnel with his bare hands and started patching the cables while showing off all the bare muscles of his upper body to Tony’s over active imagination.

“You said strip the cables that ‘don’t look like they have enough juice to fry your eyeballs out of their sockets’ and lock the device around the exposed cables.” Steve shouts back, voice muffled and amplified in the tunnel.

Tony doesn’t exactly remember what he’d said, but he’s pretty sure it had been something along those lines anyway. A thought occurs to him, and against his better judgement he asks, “How are you distinguishing the cables that might kill you?”

The silence that follows makes him feel ill and also intolerably curious.

“Steve, are you just stripping them all?”

Steve remains obstinately silent, and if Tony couldn’t hear the busy fussing of him trying to follow through on his objective Tony might have considered the possibility that he’d zapped his fine ass with the strange alien technology.

“Any of them cause you any trouble?” He fishes, the curiosity coming to the fore because frankly Stretch Armstrong was fine and once the worry was gone that left space for his one and only love. Science. Or a facsimile of it given the lack of proper equipment.

“The little green one packed a punch,” the lug admits. Tony decides that is both painful to hear and fascinating. One because he hasn’t had a chance to rip apart any space ships like this to see how they tick, and also because the knowledge that Steve has endured the shock without even flinching (and Tony had been watching, extremely close okay) was unfair.

He was about to comment on the whole affair when he hears the distinct snapping sound from within the conduit tunnel and Steve levers himself out with those ridiculous bare sweaty arms. Tony gives himself a moment because Steve Rogers was a miracle of science, and a miracle for late night fantasies, and a miracle of physiology all rolled into one.

“Done?” He asks, a little rougher than normal, but the air is dry and still, and Tony can think of at least seven excuses for the lapse so doesn’t worry too much about it. Apparently neither does Rocky.

“What’s next?” Steve asks big eager eyes focused on Tony like he has all the answers. For a power mad moment Tony realises he does, because Mr 1940’s could barely handle Siri, yet alone an alien space craft they’d hijacked to escape some sort of intergalactic kidnapping. Or at least, that’s what had seemed to be going on, they hadn’t really waited around for the language barriers to work themselves out.

“Next, we restart the engines before we run out of oxygen.” Tony announces, but he’s eyes have caught on all those muscles again and he’s not sure why Steve lost his shirt, but he’s fairly sure it’s going to be the death of him if this junkpile isn’t. As if to prove Tony’s downfall Steve shakes out his shoulders and again pushes his hair back with one big perfect hand.

“Sounds good,” Steve breathes, voice just the wrong side of soft and Tony takes that as his cue to high tail it out of there before he does something stupid like try and make a move when it’s quite clear they’ve got about 20 minutes of oxygen left if they’re having one of those ‘good’ days he heard someone mention once. So far he’s pretty sure they’re a myth, but he keeps hoping.

The engine is more his forte. While Steve can survive man handling the kind of power that would fry the average human’s brain and turn their muscles to jelly, he wasn’t really read up on alien electronic engineering.

He stands back trying to hand Tony whatever tool he asks for, but for one, he doesn’t know what any of the tools are, and for another aliens don’t really use the same tools Tony’s used to. It ends up in a fighting match of him shouting out vaguely confusing descriptions of what he needs while he’s fingers are tangled amidst the very machine that is going to keep them alive if all goes well, and Steve offering up any tool he can find.

In the end he starts dumping them on the floor beside Tony, and they play a slightly less confusing game of hot or cold while Steve points at one then the other tool until he’s got to something that Tony _thinks_ might be what he needs.

Under any other circumstances it would be frustrating, and they both know it, so they manage to keep their cool even while Tony makes a few too many sarcastic comments out loud because his energy is waning and his filter’s shot to pieces.

Steve gives him a complicated look when one of his insults are a little flat, and that’s when Tony knows they’re running out of time. The moment Steve starts passing judgment on his jokes things have become dire.

“How long have we been at this?” He asks, even though talking is starting to be a no no and Steve just looks more pained. Tony has a horrid thought, “Am I slurring?” he asks because he can’t not ask, and he can hear it now that he’s paying attention. He’s slurring, which means the oxygen’s getting too thin. It’s less than ideal. If he had his suit he’d have the mask up filtering what was left of the oxygen in the air through to keep him coherent longer, but he doesn't and they both have to work with what they have. “I’m going to pass out in a few minutes,” he explains, and it’s exhausting to even speak, “and you’re going to turn this engine on,” he forces himself to continue.

Steve doesn’t protest, which Tony appreciates, just sits there waiting for instructions and Tony has a little hysterical part of him that isn’t surprised Steve can pay attention, but wants to make a joke about it anyway. Luckily he’s in survival mode and survival mode means talking.

“You’re going to have to patch the cooling unit using this,” he pats in the general direction of the metal they’d scrounged and the welding device Steve had uncovered, “flush the system if- if it does that, then you have to jump start the engine, with something strong.” He points somewhere in the direction of Steve, “You have to find something with a jolt or it won’t turn over.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees solemnly as if he understands. Tony really hopes he does.

“And you gotta promise me something,” Tony demands, and Steve just sits there, all sweaty and shirtless and listening with rapt attention like Tony has all the knowledge in the universe and Steve is going to figure out what it means or die trying. Which is closer to the truth than not.

“Not now, Tony,” Steve argues, and so instead of fixing the last connector Tony _knows_ he has to repair he deals with this much bigger pressing problem and grabs one of those ridiculous arms and crawls into Steve Rogers personal space.

“If I die,” Tony pants out light headed, “then I will regret” he raises one finger before the idiot's face, “not marrying Shawna Dean when she asked me, and also not telling you you have a great ass.”

Steve laughs, and Tony _feels_ it through his hand and his chest which he realises is leaning against Steve. He’s not sure when that happened. “You’ve told me that before,” Steve says, and he sounds light and friendly which isn’t what Tony was going for, but it turns out whatever he was going for doesn’t matter because he blanks out before he can correct the misunderstanding.

Tony comes to slowly, there’s a cool breeze fluttering the hair on his brow and the air in his lungs tastes clean and staticy. He’s not sure what the static is about, nor does he care while he’s breathing in lungfuls of beautiful recycled space air.

“Yay,” he croaks out with as much enthusiasm as he can muster, which isn’t all that much. He turns his head to find Steve on the floor not far from him, he’s still shirtless of course. He also looks like he’s gone through the wringer- more than he’d looked before Tony had passed out. Whatever he’s done though, whatever he’s slap dashed put together has made the difference and Tony blesses his genetically enhanced super solider lungs, brain and body, for somehow managing to survive in inhuman conditions.

Tony knows he’ll have to check everything when he’s less foggy and can actually move, but for now he admires the sleeping superhero uninterrupted by duty, time, or prying eyes. It’s a sight worth looking at. His saviour, again, another situation where Tony hasn’t measured up to the battle, and somehow Tony doesn’t mind so much this time. He’ll do better next time, be more prepared, but for today he doesn’t mind that Steve’s the one taking the final victory, he thinks Steve will even tell him it was a team effort, because that’s the kind of thing the idiot says to keep his troops inspired and all that.

Tony swats that thought away before it can take root and falls asleep knowing he’ll probably wake up next time.

When Tony wakes the second time he’s still tired, but he’s at the stage where he knows he’s got to do something or risk the whole engine shutting down again. Steve’s still asleep so Tony tip toes around the engine checking for cracks and weaknesses. He can see Steve finished the connectors he’d deprioritised over trying to confess his feelings and even put the right ones in the right places. He can see that Steve also repaired the coolant crack. It’s not until he finds a broken green cable coming out of the engine room wall that Tony pauses. The walls messy, like it’s been broken by something big and strong, and the cable is still live. The sight of it raises the hairs on Tony’s arms because even from here he can _feel_ the energy coming out of it. Wisely he steps back, then back further, then looks at Steve asleep on the floor and exhausted with bruised fists and Tony knows the man punched through the wall to get to a part of the cable in easy reach of the engine. Because of _course_ he did.

Tony wonders if it was an important system Steve interrupted, but considering they’d been going to die, well there wasn’t really a priority above that was there?

The man of the hour makes a noise like he’s waking up, and Tony abandons his plans to look into the ships propulsion systems and turns his focus onto sleeping beauty for the hundredth time this kidnapping.

“Really Steve?” He asks, when he’s pretty sure the man’s awake enough to take the criticism. “You couldn’t find anything a little less powerful to kick the castle Greyskull into gear?”

“Didn’t really have a lot of time for careful decision making,” Steve replies, and he doesn't sound like he’s been on the brink of oxygen deprivation. He sounds like a man who just woke up from an afternoon nap in a sunbeam. Tony could criticise the man’s performance, could deal with getting them further out of the mess, could consider exactly how Steve had recovered so quickly (then again, they’d defrosted him from ice- it was hard to imagine anything caused much long-term damage on a system like that), or he could deal with the bigger issue, and that was that Steve was still very much dirty and topless.

Tony does what any sane man would, he seats himself on Steve’s legs and boldly meets the other man’s surprised eyes. “When I say you have a great ass,” Tony explains and Steve blinks at him, “I mean I’d very much like to get intimately acquainted with it, _intimately_.”

“You said intimately twice,” Steve corrects automatically, but Tony isn’t offended because Steve looks like he’s riding the wave between surprised and confused curiosity and that’s enough encouragement for Tony’s self-esteem.

“Well let’s do it twice, to be sure,” Tony suggests, then kisses the other man.

He tastes like machine oil and sweat, and Tony didn’t really think that was his thing, but they’re both such familiar tastes that he finds he doesn’t mind it at all. He just leans in a little more, tilts his head just right and delves into the warm depths before him. Steve kisses like he means it, and soon Tony realises that’s because he does. It goes from tasting and exploring to fierce and hungry so quickly and smoothly that Tony’s dragged along for the ride and loving every bump. He’s got fingers in his hair, warm skin under his hands, lips pushing into his own, and there’s a cool breeze on his back. Tony takes it, and marks it down as a good day as he gets to know Steve Rogers a little more intimately.


End file.
